Pupil premium must be ring-fenced

The news that the pupil premium is failing to be used as intended is unsurprising (Pupil premium rises, 22 September). Head teachers are under financial pressure and other priorities may seem more pressing. In the context of government cuts they are caught between a rock and a hard place. However it is not what parliament intended and cannot be defended. We will never know if the measure helps financially disadvantaged pupils if the money is not used for its intended purpose.

The doctrine of school autonomy underpins the academy and free schools policy, where its effects on results is very dubious indeed. But on the spending of money there can be no case for total autonomy. The pupil premium should be ring-fenced immediately.Michael Bassey, Trevor Fisher Editor, Education Politics, Colin Richards

• While the chief inspector of Ofsted is correct to look at how schools spend their pupil premium, he'd do well to scrutinise the way exam boards penalise poorer students. Today I had yet another student move up an A-level grade after paying AQA the £45 re-mark fee. In August another student paid AQA £75 for an emergency re-mark. Her grade rocketed from an E to a B securing her university place. These grade changes almost never materialise because many families can ill-afford such charges. While charges are refunded if the marks increase, such inconsistencies in exam marking are unacceptable. The educational apartheid caused by these unwarranted fees masks another reason why the rich outperform the poor.Chris ThompsonChristchurch, Dorset

• Ofsted rightly raises concerns about whether the millions of pounds of pupil premium money is being spent effectively on raising the attainment of our most disadvantaged children. But arguments about whether head teachers or ministers are best placed to decide how this resource is spent miss the essential point, which is not who takes the decision but how the decision is made.

It is robust, quality research, yielding independent evidence about what works in our classrooms, that must inform how the pupil premium is spent. Sometimes such research points towards counterintuitive and uncomfortable directions, such as questioning the benefit of reducing class sizes or the impact of teaching assistants, but neither heads nor ministers can be expected to know what works without reference to the proper evidence.

Often this academic work is not easily accessible, and this is why a group of educationists with a passion for evidence-informed education are working to set up an independent and impartial Education Media Centre. Greg Dyke British Film InstituteJohn Dunford, Whole EducationJonathan Sharples Institute for Effective Education, University of York Estelle Morris, Sue Littlemore

• The government reports that maths test scores for 11-year-olds this year show that 84% of pupils have reached the required standard level 4, the highest percentage ever (More primary school pupils hit Sats targets, 21 September). What is not reported is how much teaching time has been spent achieving these test scores, against the broad and balanced curriculum that the National Curriculum was set up to achieve.

Between 1997 and 2007 my research team collected and reported on teaching times by subject for the government; in 2006 we published a report that showed that the time spent on "teaching to the test" for maths and English had exceeded half of the available teaching time each week (at the expense of the nine other subjects teachers were legally obliged to teach). The government immediately ceased collecting the teaching time data so now there is no constraint on schools reducing their curriculum provision to improve test scores. Professor Bill BoyleUniversity of Manchester